Marcia > Recent Status Updates

Not liking Alma Grace at all. I'm still going to try, but I'm not optimistic.

Ok, now that Violet has lost control of everyone, it's gotten better.

I am not enjoying most of the townspeople. So far there's really only five I like.

This book has become somewhat disturbing to read given the events of January 6, 2021 and the right's insistence that everything was rigged. Circumstances seem very similar to what's described as happening in Chile. The same groups of people are involved, so it makes me anxious for the future.

Very sweet stories. They might have been good for me to read as a child.

This is so very disturbing, and so much worse than I knew. I feel like we were mouthing platitudes about how terrible it was. This was much more than a riot. This was a physical battle of a race war, and an attempted eradication of the black neighborhood. There were few good people who shone those days.

This is quite a convoluted book! Although it's only 260 pages long, I can only read a little bit each time because each change in chapter is so dramatic, from a reading perspective. A convoluted plot seems to be peeking out, but I'm not yet sure.

So the logic is, the story is provided on the odd chapters, and interspersed with these are the blurbs that the protagonist has been exposed to. It's not really a sharp drop into random material; Calvino is still guiding you throughout, but how the heck are these stories related to one another?

Now things are getting confusing. I've determined the protagonist is male and single, but what is going on with the book? There was a chapter that had nothing to do with the story, and then it returns to the protagonist trying to deal with a defective book. There's now a female involved, so you realize you're reading with at least one more person.

The first chapter is such a delight. It's pure charm as it directs you in settling down to read, and the navigation of the (physical) book store. It's worth savoring by itself.

This one's hard to read so far. The statistics and examples of black suppression are painful. Lincoln isn't deified (probably some of why I'm having problems), and it all sounds so hopeless. On the other hand, we really have come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.

This is one of the goriest books I have read. The kill wounds are easily located, and the comparison of the fighting to natural phenomena makes the battle intense, especially as I finish book 15, The Achaeans Desperate. My biggest struggle is I don't know all the warrior's names, the allies, and the mythology minutae, so a lot of the struggle is confusing. I thought I was better versed in Greek myths than I am.

Nelly's Hospital was about a girl who tended to the wild creatures. Grandma's Team was a funny story. The horse fell sick, so the children pulled Grandma to church. They had much more sympathy for the horse afterwards.

You have to feel for Cupid. He really suffered for love. Chow-Chow's mother was terrible. The next story is about an unwanted dog named Huckleberry, which was quite sad.

As a former Midlander, I'm offended the author keeps referring to the Midland International Airport as Odessa. I would have accepted Midland/Odessa.😇

Ijeoma's mother is white. They had a discussion on race. Her inner thoughts and description of how a sample discussion would go was hilarious.

The issues with racist statements (other than they're awful to say) are that they perpetuate stereotypes that maintain oppression. We should look how some adjectives systematically impact people of color, whereas white people are often viewed on a case by case basis, such as laziness, being late to work, weak-willed, or threatening.

Racism and economic status overlap but aren't the same. Racism is involved in everything, but nothing is solely about racism. Patterns, whether or not your actions were racist in nature, make events racist.

Racism is built into our society. We want to point with pride to our family's culture. We are each unique.

In other words, the notion of racism is not yes/no or good/bad.